Friday music blogging: Radiohead

The new Radiohead album, announced just last week, was abruptly released today, a day earlier than promised. The King of Limbs is available for download in either lossy (MP3) or lossless (WAV) format — which are, interestingly, priced differently. There’s also a lush meatspace package with vinyl, CDs, and art.

I’ll be honest, I’ve enjoyed Radiohead albums less as they’ve wandered down the path of the glitchy, bleepy, and atmospheric. To me, they hit just the right balance between rock and experimentation on OK Computer, the single best album of the 1990s.

TKoL goes even farther in their recent direction. All the songs find a groove — variously pastoral, trippy, or jittery and nervous — and ride it for a while. It sounds, like their last few albums, like nothing so much as nerdy studio noodling. (Which is ironic, since they are an absolutely jaw-dropping live act and manage to translate almost all the noodling to stage.)

Despite all that, their latest is more creative and adventurous than 97 percent of popular music, so I don’t want to complain too much. It’s definitely rewarding repeat listens.

This is one of the dreamiest and least glitchy tracks on the albums, complete with old-fashioned plaintive Thom Yorke crooning. It’s called “Codex.”